UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

legal system: federal court system based on English common law; each state has its own unique legal system, of which all but one (Louisiana, which is still influenced by the Napoleonic Code) is based on English common law;

legislative system: bicameral Congress (Senate and House of Representatives)

judicial system: Supreme Court (nine justices; nominated by the president and confirmed with the advice and consent of the Senate; appointed to serve for life); United States Courts of Appeal; United States District Courts; State and County Courts

Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

American Convention on Human Rights (signed only)

Statute of the International Criminal Court (which excludes the death penalty) (only signed)

situation:

The United States, by an administrative point of view, are composed of 50 States and 3 jurisdictions (District of Columbia, Federal Government and Military Administration).To date, the death penalty no longer exists in 19 of the 50 U.S. States and the District of Columbia, better known as the nation’s capital city Washington D.C. The most recent death penalty abolition took place in Delaware in 2016. [See chapter “Abolitions and de facto moratoriums”].The death penalty is still in effect in 31 States and in 2 jurisdictions (Federal Government and Military Administration). Of these 33 “retentionists”, 13 have not carried out an execution in at least 10 years and an additional 5 have not had an execution in at least 5. In practice, only 13 jurisdictions carried out executions in the last 5 years.In 2016, there were 20 executions carried out in only 5 States, compare to 28 executions in 2015, carried out in 6 States.The number of inmates on death row also decreased. As of 1 October 2016, there were 2,902 inmates under a sentence of death, a decrease of 41 from 1 January 2016.There were 30 new death sentences in 2016, in 13 States (19 less than in 2015).Problems with executions in Arizona, Ohio and Oklahoma, states’ inability to obtain lethal injection drugs, exonerations of people who were wrongly convicted, the availability of prison terms of life without parole and the cost of capital trials and the appeals process, are main factors in the persistent decline of executions and death sentences.

ExecutionsTwenty executions took place in only 5 of the 31 States with the death penalty in 2016: Georgia (9); Texas (7); Alabama (2); Missouri (1); Florida (1).It is the first time since Texas resumed executions in 1982 that it doesn’t lead the list of executioners.The 20 executions in 2016 represent the lowest number since 1991. Also the fact that only 5 States have carried out executions is a record, it is the lowest number since 1988.Since death penalty was reintroduced in 1976 up to 31 December 2016, 1,442 executions have been carried out in the USA. Compared to population, the states that carry out more executions are, in order, Oklahoma, Texas, Delaware, Virginia and Missouri.Since 1976, three States have executed only “volunteers”, i.e. death row inmates who voluntarily asked to hasten the execution process: Pennsylvania, Oregon and Connecticut. As a whole, since 1976, 143 inmates have been executed as “volunteers”, 10% of all executed.All executions in 2016 were carried out by lethal injection. And all have involved men. The average age of those executed in 2015 is 48,7 years. The average time between sentencing and execution of those put to death in 2015 was 18.5 years. At the extremes of this average there is a Texas detainee who was executed after 7 years (he was not a "volunteer") and one from Georgia, killed after 36 years on death row.As for race, 16 of those executed in 2016 were White, 2 Black, and 2 Latino. The 20 executed in 2016 had been convicted of 26 murders: the victims were 24 White and 2 Latino.

Death SentencesBesides the executions, death sentences are also constantly decreasing. That is for the minor propensity of juries to hand down the maximum penalty and for always more widespread tendency of prosecutors to “content” themselves with minor sentences in exchange for shorter and more secure trials.According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there were 30 new death sentences in 2016 (19 less than in 2015), the lowest number since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The maximum was in 1996, with 315 capital sentences.For the sixth consecutive year, the number of news death sentences is under 100.Of the 32 States and 2 jurisdictions (Federal Government and Military Administration) with the death penalty in 2016, 13 imposed a death sentence. Death sentences, like executions, were largely clustered in a few States. As usual, the State which handed down the most part of the sentences was California (9) which is the most populated in the USA. Two States handed down 4 death sentneces each (Texas and Ohio). Alabama handed down 3 death sentences, Florida 2 and Arizona, Arkansas, Kansas, North Carolina, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon e Pennsylvania, 1.Texas, that for many years has leaded the number of executions, in 2016 issued only 4 death sentences, the second lowest of every time. In 2015 the sentences had been 2. The maximum was 48, in 1999. As for ethnicity, in 2016 the new death sentences were issued against 17 Blacks, 6 Whites, 3 Asian and 3 Latin-American.

Death RowThe number of people on death row continued to decline. According to figures from NAACP-LDF “Death Row USA”, as of 31 October 2016, there were 2,902 inmates on death rows across the country, a decrease of 41 compared to 1 January 2016. This is the second time since Spring of 1995 that the number of inmates decreases under 3,000. The first time was 2015. At the time the death row population was growing after the Furman v. Georgia sentence of 1972 that had struck down the death penalty, and the Gregg v. Georgia sentence of 1976 that had brought it back.The total population on death row has decreased every year since 2001. In 2000, 3,670 inmates were under a sentence of death.California continued to have the largest death row population (745), followed by Florida (395), Texas (254), Alabama (194), and Pennsylvania (175). California, with 40 million people, is by far the most populous US state (Texas is second, with 28 million, Florida is third with 21 million). Its death row is so populated in part in relation to the high number of death sentences issued, but partly because it has carried out very few executions, 13 from 1976 to today. The latest execution dates back to January 2006.The racial demographics of death row nationwide are 42.2% white, 41.8% black, 13% Latin-American, 1.8% Asian, and 0.9% Native American Overall, 57% of inmates on death row belong to racial minorities.Divided by gender, there are 54 women (1.8%) and 2,848 men (98.1%) on the United States’ death rows.

Abolitions and “de facto” moratoriumsTo date, the death penalty no longer exists in 19 of the 50 U.S. States and 1 jurisdiction (District of Columbia) [In brackets the year of abolition]: Alaska (1957), Connecticut (2012), Hawaii (1957), Illinois (2011), Iowa (1965), Maine (1887), Maryland (2013), Massachusetts (1984), Michigan (1846), Minnesota (1911), Nebraska (2015), New Jersey (2007), New Mexico (2009), New York (2007), North Dakota (1973), Rhode Island (1984), Vermont (1964), West Virginia (1965), Wisconsin (1853), and District of Columbia (1981).In 2015, the death penalty had been abolished in Nebraska, but reintroduced in November 2016 after a ballot question reversing the legislature's repeal of the death penalty and restoring capital punishment in the state passed with 57% of the vote.In four other States – Washington, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Oregon – the Governors granted a stay of executions and essentially put executions on hold because of concerns about the death penalty system.In Ohio, Governor John Kasich has postponed all executions to at least 2016 as a result of the practical and procedural problems related to the supply of lethal drugs. On April 1, 2016 the Attorney General announced that the State will not carry out executions not even in 2016.On September 14, 2016, in Oklahoma, State Attorney General Scott Pruitt said the executions would be suspended for at least another 2 years. In Oklahoma, executions have been suspended since it was discovered that on January 15, 2015, to kill Charles Warner, the prison administration used potassium acetate instead of potassium chloride. A grand jury charged with investigating the case found a series of serious defaults on the part of the penitentiary administration in more than one of the executions carried out since 2014.On September 18, 2016, in North Carolina, Robeson County District Attorney Johnson Britt, and several experts, agreed to predict that executions will not resume until "several years." In the state, following a series of legal actions, the latest execution dates back to August 2006, and since January 2007, the state is considered in a condition of "informal moratorium" after a court has suspended executions.Not a moratorium, but a massive annulment of death sentences was decided on December 22, 2016 in Florida. The State Supreme Court, in Asay v. State and Mosley v. State, considered the approximately 200 death sentences issued from 2002 to today unlawful, while upheld the constitutionality of the over 150 sentences issued before that date. As is well known, in January, the United States Supreme Court with the Hurst v. Florida had declared unconstitutional that part of the capital law that allows death sentences without the unanimity of the jury.Of the 33 jurisdictions where the death penalty is still in effect, 13 have not carried out an execution in more than ten years (hence, we can consider that they are implementing a “de facto moratorium”): California (2006), Colorado (1997), Kansas (1965), Montana (2006), Nebraska (1997), Nevada (2006), NewHampshire (1939), North Carolina (2006), Oregon (1997), Pennsylvania (1999), Wyoming (1992), U.S. Federal Government (2003), and U.S. Military (1961).Five other States have not had an execution in over 5 years: Kentucky (2008), Louisiana (2010), South Carolina (2011), Utah (2010) and Washington (2010).

LegislationDuring 2016, there were many legislative proposals concerning the death penalty, some towards abolition, others to create stricter norms regarding its application and others to facilitate its application. Many of these bills were short-lived, blocked in the preliminary phases of the legislative review process. It must be recalled that the United States Parliaments focus legislative action early in the year, and each state has a deadline by which the new laws are to go, otherwise they should be presented in the following year. These are the bills that have passed at least the early stages of discussion.In Delaware, on 28 January 2016, the House rejected 23-16 a bill (SB 40) that would have abolished the death penalty.In Missouri, on 28 January 2016, an abolitionist bill has passed the Senate Judiciary Committee 4-3, with the favourable vote of two Republican senators and two Democrats. On 13 May 2016, the bill was placed in the so-called “informal calendar”, which means that the measure this year will not go ahead.In New Hampshire, on 3 March 2016, the Senate rejected 12-12 a bill that would have abolished the death penalty, but agreed to discuss one that would establish a moratorium in light to develop a method to prevent miscarriages of justice. New Hampshire is the only New England state to still have the death penalty. The last execution was in 1939, and currently there is only one detainee on death row. In the Senate, a tie vote is tantamount to a defeat. Again in New Hampshire, on 10 March, the House rejected by a vote by acclamation the HB 1522 bill that would have extended the death penalty to “terrorist crimes with more than one victim and the murders committed while the victim exercises its civil rights, like voting, attending school, or else.”In Utah, on 3 March 2016, the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected 2-5 bill HB 136 that would have added the aggravating circumstance of “human trafficking” to those for which the death penalty can be pursued. The bill passed the House Judiciary Committee on February 2 (6-3), and the full House on 12 February (44-28). Also in Utah, on 1 and 2 March 2016, the Senate approved on first and second reading the abolition of the death penalty (SB189). The House's Justice Commission approved it on March 8, but on 11 March it expired the deadline for the House to give the final vote.On 7 March 2016, Florida Governor Rick Scott, Republican, has ratified the law HB 7101. The new law amends the state capital law that was declared unconstitutional on 12 January 2016 by the Supreme Court of the United States. The new law provides that juries can now issue a guilty verdict 10-2 (before, it was 7-5), and that the decision of the jury is binding on the court. In 28 of the 31 states that use the death penalty, unanimity is required to issue a death sentence. The exceptions are Florida, Alabama and Delaware.In Alabama, on 7 April 2016, Senators have voted 20-6 to establish an “Innocence Inquiry Commission” to review some capital convictions. Under the narrowly tailored-bill, the panel would review new evidence in death row cases that hadn’t previously been heard by a court. Republican Sen. Dick Brewbaker, the bill’s sponsor, said he supports the death penalty, but the state should make sure people are guilty "For people to regain confidence in the capital system". At the end of the 2016 legislative session, the bill was shelved with the formula “Updated Sine Die”.On May 3, 2016, still in Alabama, the Parliament sent HB 379, which increases the secrecy surrounding the executions, to the governor's ratification. The law passed the House on March 23 with a 99-0 vote, and the Senate on May 3 with a 28-0 vote. The measure was not ratified by the Governor.In Ohio, on 12 April 2016, the House approved 83-11 a bill (HB 57) that would expand the list of aggravated circumstances under which murders committed “purposely and with prior calculation and design” are classified as aggravated murders. The law, sent to the Senate, has not continued its path.In Virginia, on 24 April 2016, HB 815 went into effect. The new law permits the Virginia Department of Corrections to specially contract with a compounding pharmacy to produce lethal injection drugs and make the identity of the pharmacy a state secret. On April 8 the Governor substituted his secrecy proposal in place of the legislature’s plan to use the electric chair to execute prisoners if lethal injection drugs were deemed unavailable. Senate concurred in Governor’s recommendation 22-16. House concurred in Governor’s recommendation 59-40.In Mississippi, on 3 May 2016, the Governor has ratified SB 2237 that increases the secrecy around executions. The bill had passed the Senate 39-12 and the House 103-13.On October 6, 2016, the New Mexico House approved 36-30 the reinstatement of the death penalty. HB7 bill, filed by deputy Monica Youngblood (Republican), provides for the death penalty for anyone killing a policeman, a corrections officer, or a minor. On October 6, 2016, the Senate closed the special autumn session without considering the measure.On November 8, 2016, California had approved Proposition 66 which proposes to amend the procedures of death sentences in order to expedite the issuance of execution warrants, but on December 20, the California Supreme Court temporarily halted implementation, and on December 28, a state agency (the Office of Administrative Law - OAL) rejected the new law because of "Inconsistencies and ambiguities in the protocol, insufficient justification for some regulations and a need for further response to public comments”.

Methods of ExecutionAll U.S. States and the Federal Government use lethal injection as their primary method of execution. The U.S. Military provides lethal injection as the sole method of execution.Some States use a three-drug protocol, others use a two-drug process, and some a single-drug method for executions.The three-drug protocol uses an anaesthetic, followed by a muscle relaxant to paralyze the inmate and potassium chloride to stop the inmate’s heart. The two-drug protocol uses a sedative as the first element and a lethal dose of a painkiller as the second drug. The one-drug protocol uses a lethal dose of an anaesthetic.The work of several key human-rights groups focusing on the pharmaceutical industry that produces drugs used for lethal injection has made the acquisition of appropriate pharmaceuticals difficult for U.S. prison authorities. This has, in recent years, brought about numerous changes in lethal injection protocols as prison authorities attempt to work around the reluctance of pharmaceutical companies to collaborate in providing drugs traditionally used in the lethal injection process.In an effort to thwart advocacy campaigns by anti-death penalty organisations that utilize freedom of information laws and the media to convince the drug’s makers to cut off the supply, some States have also passed laws to provide a cloak of secrecy around the names of suppliers.In some States the “old methods” are still available upon request by the condemned and generally only for crimes committed before the adoption of lethal injection. The electric chair is still available in 9 States: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma (electrocution is authorized if lethal injection is held to be unconstitutional and nitrogen gas is not allowed), South Carolina, Tennessee (also if both lethal injection is found unconstitutional and lethal injection drugs are not available), and Virginia. The Supreme Courts of Georgia and Nebraska have declared the electric chair unconstitutional, but the capital laws have not been updated. The gas chamber is still available in 5 States: Arizona, California, Oklahoma (as of 17 April 2015, nitrogen gas chamber would be employed if either lethal injection drugs are unavailable or if lethal injection is deemed unconstitutional), Missouri and Wyoming (also if lethal injection is ever held to be unconstitutional). The firing squad is available in 3 States: Mississippi (reintrodotta il 3 maggio 2016 e utilizzabile nel caso l’iniezione letale diventi o troppo costosa o impossibile da attuare), Oklahoma (it could be used if none of the previously mentioned methods are allowed) and Utah (in the absence of lethal injection drugs). Hanging is available in 3 States: Delaware, New Hampshire (only if lethal injection cannot be given) and Washington.Of the 1,442 executions carried out in the USA since the death penalty was reintroduced in 1977 and until 31 December 2016, 1,267 were carried out by lethal injection, 158 on the electric chair, 11 in the gas chamber, 3 by hanging and 3 by shooting.

The Supreme CourtIn recent years, the Supreme Court of the United States has made “milestone” decisions, on one side, prohibiting the execution of minors (2005) and the mentally disabled (2002) and, on the other, confirming the constitutionality of lethal injection (2008).As is known, the judges of the Supreme Court are appointed “for life”, and then, because of the very slow replacement of the judges, the guidelines of the Court change very gradually. But one sentence in 2016 has shaken the capital systems of 3 states.On 12 January 2016, the Court declared unconstitutional the capital law of Florida, with repercussions on other two states, Alabama and Delaware, which have very similar laws. Addressing the case Hurst v. Florida, the Court declared the law unconstitutional to the extent that the judge has more power in the jury deciding a death sentence. By an 8-1 vote, the court overturned the death sentence of Timothy Hurst, and simultaneously declared unconstitutional the greatest power that has the judge with respect to the jury in deciding the sentence. The vote of the jury in almost all states is tantamount to a death sentence, because the judge has the duty to respect it. In three states instead, Florida, Alabama and Delaware, the court is not obliged by law to follow the vote of the jury.According to the Supreme Court, this violates the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees the accused’s right to be tried by a “jury of peers”, as if a member of the bench (in this case the judge) has a greater power than the other members, the jury is clearly not composed of “equals.”The Hurst v Florida judgment, beyond the “technicality” on the role of the judge, does not explicitly address the real crux of the matter, namely the fact that Florida, Alabama and Delaware are the only three states that allow the issuance of death sentences without a unanimous vote. Many observers believe that the Supreme Court has made a compromise choice, leaving decisions to local courts and parliaments.After this ruling, Alabama and Florida have modified their laws, tying the judge to respect the majority vote. In Delaware instead, the Parliament has not acted, and a judge has blocked all capital proceedings.Despite the new laws, the Supreme Court again dealt a blow to the capital system of the three states: on 2 May 2016, it overturned the death sentence of Bart Johnson (the case is Bart W. v. Alabama) because it was issued pursuant to a law which has since been declared unconstitutional. On 31 May, the Supreme Court reiterated its position, cancelling the sentence of Corey Wimbley (the case is Wimbley v. Alabama). The same was done on 6 June with Kirksey v. Alabama, and on 3 October with Russell v. Alabama. It seems clear at this point that all death sentences in recent decades in Florida, Alabama and Delaware, states that have more than 600 people on death row, must be questioned.

Exonerations and Commutations“Exoneree” is a technical term that, in the U.S. justice system, indicates an individual convicted in the first degree but absolved on appeal. As is well noted, appeals in the United States are not one-time, unrepeatable events, but can be presented every time the defence feels that it has discovered new elements relevant to exonerating the condemned. It is not rare that certain “appeals” can be presented 20 years or more after initial sentencing. In some cases, the “exonerees” are obviously innocent (in cases where DNA evidence proves the guilt of someone else, for instance), in other cases, there is dismissal on appeal for “lack of evidence” or because, after so many years from the actual crime, the Public Prosecutor no longer has credible witnesses to testify.The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) keeps a list of these “exonerees”, according to which, since 1973 up to 31 December 2016, there have been 156 exonerations in 26 different States. According to “The Innocence List”, the average time between sentencing and the recognition of one’s innocence is 11.3 years. In 20 cases, proof of innocence was thanks to new DNA testing.According to the criteria set by the DPIC, in 2016 no death row inmates were exonerated.In fact, some old capital cases have also had a positive outcome in 2016, but do not match the DPIC’s strict criteria for cataloging.For example, on June 6, 2016 in Texas, Judge Jack Carter dismisses all the charges that in 1978 had led to the death sentence of Kerry Max Cook, meanwhile at the age of 60. Cook continues to pursue a declaration of "actual innocence" that would make him eligible for more than $3 million in compensation from the state of Texas for the two decades he was wrongfully incarcerated on death row. The trial court is expected to rule on that claim later this month and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals will then review the dismissal of charges. Because the dismissal of charges is not yet final, Cook has not yet been added to DPIC's Exoneration List.Another non-profit association, the National Registry of Exonerations (NRE), keeps a list of exemptions, not just for death sentences. According to a NRE study in 2016, 166 people have been exonerated after being convicted of serious crimes, 54 of them for murder. The NRE is a project launched in 2012 by the University of Michigan and Northwestern University. The NRE uses slightly different criteria from those used by the DPIC, and provides more elaborations. For example, according to NRE, assessing cases of exoneration over the last 10 years, improper behaviour by the police or public prosecution, and false testimony would be the main causes of judicial errors. The Registry reports that the improper behaviour of the police or public prosecution had a role, albeit not exclusive, in 571 of the 836 exonerations involving cases of murder (only a part was prosecuted with the death penalty) ie in 68.3% of cases. Witness errors were found in 203 cases (24.3%), fake or misleading forensics in 194 cases (23.2%), and false or "manufactured" confessions in 182 cases (21.8%). The Registry also identifies inadequate legal assistance by defenders in 218 cases (26.1%). According to the analysis of the Register, racial discrimination still has a strong role. There is evidence of improper behaviour of the police and/or the prosecutors in 76% of cases of exoneration where Blacks were charged, compared to 63% of cases of Whites. Restricting the research to only capital cases, the difference between Blacks and Whites is even greater: 87% of Blacks sentenced to death suffered improper behaviour of the police and/or the prosecutors, against 67% of Whites.Death penalty aside, the Obama administration, since the election of the first term, has often referred to the need for reforms to mitigate the harshness of the judicial and prison systems in the nation, in particular, the system of " mandatory minimum sentences" introduced in the federal system by President Clinton, a facet of the larger "war of drugs". The “mandatory minimum sentence” does not give the court the power to independently assess the seriousness of a crime or to contextualize it using any mitigating means, but binds it to issue, for example, a mandatory sentence of 30 years or life if a defendant is arrested for the third time for drug dealing.Within his two mandates, President Barak Obama has issued 774 "commutations" (this is the technical term used in the US). It is more than that of the previous 7 presidents combined, and less than the approximately 14,000 granted by former President Gerald Ford. He commuted the sentences of anyone who had deserted or dodged the draft during the Vietnam War.Almost all of Obama's commutations involved people convicted of non-violent crimes related to drug use and drug trafficking. The commutations issued in 2016 alone are 590, the highest number in a single year in US history.As is well known, it is customary for the US Presidents to conclude their mandates by promulgating a series of clemency measures.On January 17, 2017, three days before Donald Trump sworn in as the new President, Obama issued 209 commutations and 64 pardons.By "commutation" is meant to shorten a sentence, for "pardon" it is intended to have immediate release due to "presidential pardon". The case that has mostly attracted the attention of the media is that of "soldier Manning", sentenced to 35 years for handing to Snowden and Assange the confidential information of the Wikileaks case. But Obama also commuted to life in prison without parole 2 death sentences, that of Abelardo Arboleda Ortiz, a federal death row prisoner, and that of Dwight Loving, a military death row prisoner. It had been since 2001 that a president did not commute a death sentence.

The Cost of the Death PenaltyBesides the consideration of misplaced justice, which has been the subject of political debate in recent years, questions of the “cost of the death penalty” are coming to the fore.As is well known, in the United States the various courts have very precise budgets, which must be accounted for to the last cent. If prosecutors wish to try cases involving the death sentence they must provide more evidence, more lab results, more testimony and the State must provide the accused with better legal counsel. This all has its costs, which increase in successive phases of the legal process, because those who risk death have a right to increased free legal assistance, lab analysis to contrast that of the Prosecution (at cost to the State), and to hire expert witnesses (also at cost to the State) and to present a series of appeals and recourses that are not available to those who risk imprisonment. This means that when prosecutors begin death penalty cases, they start a process which drains funds from the State, and that, often, because of these expenses, there are fewer funds for other activities.In many interviews with politicians and in bills presented in numerous States, the problems related to the “cost of the death penalty” came under focus with consideration of an alternative: giving up on capital punishment, which usually involves people for which there is already ample proof for conviction, and using the money saved to solve cases where criminals have yet to be identified.In debates pro or against the abolition, it is often raised the suspicion that capital trials are for the benefit of few prosecutors who seek visibility, often in order to facilitate political careers, while the high costs end up falling on the entire community.In Ohio, on 1 April 2016, Attorney General Mike DeWine issued a report on capital punishment in his state. Only 1 person was condemned to die last year. A total of 324 death sentences have been handed down under the state’s 1981 law. The report reflects a continued drop in death sentences in Ohio as prosecutors file fewer cases and juries choose the option of life without parole. It also comes at a time when Ohio doesn’t have any lethal drugs. No executions are scheduled this year. The report says 53 inmates have been executed since 1999. 19 have had their sentences reduced to prison time and 27 have died before execution. Ohio has 142 active death penalty cases. Currently, if the state wanted to perform an execution, the state is not in possession of the necessary lethal drugs. In its report DeWine has not explicitly addressed the chapter of the “costs”, but the blatant disproportion between the cases prosecuted as a capital offense and executions actually carried out is inscribed in the national average.In Louisiana, a study published on 28 April 2016 calculated than less than 12 % of death sentences end up in executions. The report “Louisiana Death Sentenced Cases and Their Reversals, 1976-2015” examined each of the 241 death sentences handed down in Louisiana over the past 30 years. Just 28 of those sentenced to death – less than 12 % – have been executed. Meanwhile, 127 of the death verdicts, more than 1/2 the total, have been reversed, meaning that either a new trial was ordered or the death sentence was rescinded. That number includes 9 exonerations.In Utah, on 15 June 2016, it was published a report, commissioned by Parliament and compiled by a state agency. It is estimated that each sentenced to death costs the taxpayer 1.66 million dollars more than a life sentence without parole.In Nebraska on August 19, 2016, a study calculated that the death penalty cost $ 14 million a year. Ernie Goss, an economics professor at Creighton University, completed the death penalty cost review for Retain a Just Nebraska, which was waging a campaign to keep the Nebraska Legislature's repeal of capital punishment. Goss calculated the state spent $533 million on "justice activities" in 2013. Without the death penalty, the cost would have been about $519 million, he wrote. Between 1973 and 2014, Nebraska saw 1,842 homicides and 33 death sentences but only 3 executions, Goss found. The state's last execution took place in 1997.In Virginia on December 11, 2016, an Associated Press inquiry calculated that the state paid over 60 times more lethal drugs than in the previous year.

The Stance of the “Executioner”… and the Victims’ FamiliesThe effects of the death penalty on those who carry it out were clearly described by those who have worked for years on death row.In Ohio, on 24 February 2016, two former Ohio prison bosses who watched dozens of men executed have joined a national group which is “strongly concerned about the fairness and efficacy of the death penalty in America.” Terry Collins and Reginald Wilkinson, both former directors of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, are part Public Safety Officials on the Death Penalty. The Washington, D.C.-based group is a coalition of law enforcement, prosecutors and prison officials. Not all members of the coalition are opposed to capital punishment, but all share the conclusion that the system is “ineffective, expensive and makes mistakes.” Collins, who oversaw 33 executions is also a member of Ohioans Against Executions. He recently published a report in which he wrote: “The death penalty is a defective mechanism that is not worth it to adjust.”Perhaps, the most unexpected stance on the death penalty came from the family members of victims.In Connecticut, on 21 January 2016, Dawn Mancarella, whose mother, Joyce Masury, was murdered 20 years ago, called the death penalty “a waste of energy and money that doesn’t bring justice or closure.” Mancarella had already testified in Parliament against the death penalty in 2012, the year of abolition, and in January 2015 she issued a written statement in which she reiterated her position. The testimony was attached to the court documents relating to the case in which the State Supreme Court discussed the fate of the 11 persons on death row at the time of abolition. Mancarella said that the death penalty forces victims’ family members to “go through the pain of reliving their loved one’s murder over and over again, year after year” through the lengthy appellate process. This, she says, “is the opposite of justice and closure — even if the convicted offender is put to death in one, ten or twenty years, the anguish of losing your loved one never goes away and a state appointed execution doesn’t make you feel any better.” She contrasts the energy and money expended on the death penalty with the state’s treatment of programs to help victims’ families heal: “it is beyond frustrating to see millions of dollars invested into a single capital case,” she says, “while victims’ services are perpetually underfunded.” She concludes, “It is time to give back our misplaced time and energy to the survivors of homicide for their healing and truly honouring their loved one.”In Florida, on 19 February 2016, Darlene Farah reiterated her request that the murderess of her daughter is not sentenced to death. Mrs. Farah is the mother of Shelby Farah, 20, killed during a robbery at a store in 2013. In the trial that began in March 2016 against James Xavier Rhodes, 24, Duval County prosecutors are seeking the death penalty over the objections of Ms. Farah’s family. After unsuccessful attempts to persuade prosecutor Angela Corey to non-capitally resolve the case, Darlene Farah publicly expressed her views in a recent column in TIME. Farah said, “I do not want my family to go through the years of trials and appeals that come with death-penalty cases.” Instead, she wants her family to be able to, “celebrate Shelby’s life, honour her memory and begin the lengthy healing process.” Darlene Farah says her daughter would not have wanted the death penalty to be sought on her behalf, and “more killing in no way honours my daughter’s memory or provides solace to my family.”In Missouri, on December 27, 2016, family members of a victim asked the governor to commute all death sentences. When Missouri executed Jeff Ferguson on march 26, 2014 for the rape and murder of Kelli Hall, her father said the Hall family "believed the myth that Ferguson’s execution would close our emotional wounds." At that time, Jim Hall told reporters "It's over, thank God." But, he now says, it wasn't. In an op-ed in the Columbia Daily Tribune, Mr. Hall writes that his family has "come to deeply regret Ferguson's execution" and appeals to Governor Jay Nixon to commute the death sentences of the 25 men remaining on the state's death row. Hall says that several weeks after Ferguson was executed, his family viewed a documentary film that featured comments from Ferguson that "conveyed such genuine remorse for the pain he caused both our family and his because of his horrible actions." A few months later, the Halls also learned that Ferguson had been a leader in the prison's hospice, GED, and restorative justice programs, including one in which prisoners listened to victims share the devastating impact the crimes had on their lives. The Hall family was able to forgive Ferguson as soon as they saw the film, and Mr. Hall says "my family wishes we had known of his involvement in these programs and been invited to participate. ... I'm convinced significant healing would have occurred for us all if our family had engaged in a frank conversation with him at the prison. I wish I had had the chance -- consistent with my Christian beliefs -- to have told him in person that I forgave him for what he did to our innocent and precious daughter."

The Relationship between Crime and PunishmentIn November 2016 the U.S. Department of Justice released its annual FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2015, reporting no change in the national murder rate since 2013. The massive collection of data and statistics is maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). “Crime in the United States 2015”, with data updated to 2015, is compiled by assembling the data of more than 18,000 bodies of local and national police, and covers about 321 million people, including 3.5 million of Puerto Rico. The report shows that the homicide rate in the US has grown slightly in the last year: 4.9 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. It was 4.5 both in 2013 and 2014. The first survey, in 1993, gave a percentage of 9.5.As the total number, murder (except manslaughter) in 2015 were 15,696, with an increase of 10,8% on 2014. Data on homicides, albeit rising compared to the recent past, are still considered an improvement over a sample year that was identified in 2006: in this case homicides would fall by 9.3%, and the rate of homicides every 10,000 inhabitants of 15.5%. It is also estimated that the increase in murders recorded this year is also the result of two in-depth studies conducted by the media on these data collected by FBI, according to which about 2,000 murders per year were not recorded.To the 15,696 murders, they must be added the so-called “justifiable homicides”, i.e. those committed by police in carrying out their functions, or by individuals for what is considered self-defence. Police in 2015 killed 442 people. Private citizens have killed, respecting the law, 328 people.The figure of the killings by police has been challenged in recent months by some online databases compiled by volunteers (including “Fatal Encounters” and “Killed by Police”). They estimate that police victims are about 1,100 per year. The FBI acknowledges the incompleteness of its data, explained by the fact that the local police have no obligation to provide any updates regarding this type of “crime.”Breaking down the data by region and using the classic division of the United States (Northeast, Midwest, South and West), the Northeast region, which uses the death penalty the least, had the lowest murder rate of the 4 geographic regions. By contrast, the South, which carries out, on average, more executions in the United States, had the highest murder rate: 5.9. To have a comparative measure, in recent years, the number of homicides in Italy has always been limited to over 500, with a homicide rate of less than 1/100,000.Overall, in 2015, little less than 10.8 million people were arrested and taken into custody in the United States. The largest groups are crimes against property 1.46 million, violent crimes, 0.5 million, drug crimes 1.5 million, and driving under the effect of alcohol or drug 1.1 million.According to official data contained in the report “Prisoners in 2015” (NCJ 250229), as of 31 December 2015, in US federal and state prisons were held 1,526,800 people, with a decrease of 35,000 units (2%) over the previous year.According to another official report (Correctional Populations in The United States, 2015) other 728,000 people would be held in local prisons [as is well known, the United States will use two different terms: Prison is the state or federal prison, Jail is the local prison], 3.9 million subject to periodic inspections (probation), and more than 870,000 people on parole.The total number of people who are called “under the supervision of adult correctional systems” is 6,741,400 (115,000 less than the previous year).The prison population is made up to 18.6% by women. About 117,000 prisoners from 30 states and the Federal Circuit are held in privately operated prisons. The total number of prisoners is decreasing by about 1% a year from 2007 to date. From 2014 to 2015 the decrease was 1.7%.Both these reports are prepared by the BJS (Bureau of Justice Statistics), a federal agency.

Opinion PollsIn recent years, opinion polls show a basic ambivalence: when given a simple “yes” or “no” to whether one supports the death penalty, the answer “yes” maintains favour, and its decline, year by year, is slow. Instead, when opinion polls include a question offering life imprisonment without parole, things change drastically.A nationwide survey on September 29, 2016 reports that for the first time in 45 years, the support for the death penalty drops below 50%.The Pew Research Center has published the results of its periodic survey of the death penalty. This is an incomplete survey, because it only includes the yes/no options, and does not include the “life without parole” alternative, which in other surveys in recent years has often gained the majority.In the 2016 poll, 49% are in favor and 42% opposed to the death penalty. Last year they were 56% favorable and 38% opposed.Public support for the death penalty fell by 7 percentage points in the last year.The poll marks the first time in 45 years that support for capital punishment polled below 50%, when a Gallup poll in released in November 1971 also reported that 49% of Americans supported the death penalty. 42% of respondents told Pew that they oppose capital punishment, the most since a May 1966 Gallup poll reported 47% of Americans against the death penalty. The poll results reflect the continuation—and perhaps acceleration—of a 20-year trend of decreasing support for, and increasing opposition to, capital punishment. Support for the death penalty declined across every demographic group in the past year, with the largest decline coming among Independents (13 percentage points). Majorities of Blacks (63%), Hispanics (50%), 18-29 year-olds (51%), college graduates (51%), Democrats (58%), and people with no religious affiliation (50%) now oppose the death penalty and—while comprising less than a majority—more women, Independents, and Catholics say they oppose the death penalty than support it. While 72% of Republicans say they favor capital punishment, support for the death penalty among Republicans dropped 5 points in the past year.White evangelical Protestants continue to back the use of the death penalty by a wide margin (69% favor, 26% oppose). White mainline Protestants also are substantially more likely to support (60%) than oppose (31%) the death penalty. Among Catholics, opinion is more divided: 43% of Catholics favor capital punishment, while 46% oppose it. Since 2011, support for the death penalty has declined among every demographic group, with overall support falling by 13 points.

The death penalty for womenIn the United States, there are 2,848 men (98,14%) and 54 women (1,86%) on death row. As of 1° ottobre 2016 there were 61 male and 1 female on the federal death row. Since 1977, 16 women (4 black and 12 white) have been executed out of a total of 1,442 people, as of 31 December 2016.

United NationsOn 19 December 2016, the United States voted against the Resolution on a Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty at the UN General Assembly.

FBI releases serial killer Samuel Little's drawings of victims in the hope that they can be identified. Samuel Little, 78, Black, last year confessed to killing 90 people over three decades. The killings took place across the US between 1970 and 2005. Little was arrested on September 5, 2012, in Kentucky, after authorities used DNA testing to establish that he was involved in the murder of Carol Elford, killed on July 13, 1987; Audrey Nelson, killed on August 14, 1989; and Guadalupe Apodaca, killed on September 3, 1987. All three women were killed and later found on the streets of Los Angeles. Little was extradited to Los Angeles, where he was charged on January 7, 2013. A few months later, the police said that Little was being investigated for involvement in dozens of murders committed in the 1980s, which until then had been undisclosed. In 2014, In California, he was convicted, and sentenced to three life sentences without parole to be served continuously. On the day of the verdict, Little continued to insist on his innocence. After this conviction, California authorities said that he might have killed people in nine states, starting in the 1970s. He claims to have killed as many as 90 people; investigators have linked him to at least 34 murders. Investigators say he targeted "marginalised and vulnerable women", and that some of their bodies went unidentified and deaths uninvestigated. Having heard all of his confessions, they believe he could be one of the most prolific serial killers in US history. Little, a former competitive boxer, would knock his victims out with punches before strangling them - meaning that there were not always "obvious signs" that the person had been killed. Now, they are hoping that Little's drawings can help them to finally find out who the victims were so that their families can be notified. "With no stab marks or bullet wounds, many of these deaths were not classified as homicides but attributed to drug overdoses, accidents, or natural causes," the FBI said in its initial report in November last year. Little was first caught in 2012 when he was arrested on a drugs charge in a homeless shelter in Kentucky, and extradited to California. Once he was in police custody in Los Angeles, officers carried out DNA testing on him. The results linked him to three unsolved murders from 1987 and 1989, which were all in Los Angeles County. He pleaded not guilty at trial, but was eventually convicted and sentenced to three consecutive life sentences, with no chance of parole. His three known victims were beaten and strangled, before their bodies were dumped in alleyways or bins. Before being convicted of murder Little had already built up an extensive criminal record, with offences from armed robbery to rape in a number of different states across the US. Little's case was passed on to the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Programme (ViCAP), which analyses people who serially commit violent and and sexual crimes. They then share their findings with local law enforcement in different areas, in order to check them against any unsolved crimes. ViCAP, tasked with doing a full background check on Little, noticed that the three LA killings were very similar to a number of unsolved deaths dating back to the 1970s. Crime analyst Christina Palazzolo writes on the FBI website that they "found a case out of Odessa, Texas, that sounded very much like him, and we could place him passing through the area around the same time". In spring last year, investigators set up an interview with Little, hoping to find out more information. Knowing that he wanted to move prisons, they struck a deal - he could move prisons if he talked. Then, during the interview, Ms Palazzolo says "he went through city and state and gave us the number of people he killed in each place". Once he was done, he had confessed to 90 killings. The FBI says it has so far been able to verify 34 of these. Many of Little's victims were sex workers, people with substance abuse issues and trans women, whose deaths may not have been investigated or would have been ruled to be accidental at the time. His memory of the killings was mostly precise, as he could give details about where they happened and what car he was driving. But he was unable to remember specific dates - which, investigators say, has caused further issues with identifying the victims. Agents are continuing to question Little and collect drawings of his victims. It is not explicitly stated, but it seems to understand that, in exchange for the collaboration, the death penalty will not be applied to Little. This reopens a polemic always present on the front of the death penalty: as happened in other cases of serial killer, the "negotiation" to find the corpses causes serial killers are able to avoid the death penalty, which instead fails to "occasional" killers, denying the constitutional assumption that the death penalty should be reserved only "to the worst of the worst".

(Source: bbc.com, HoC, 13/02/2019)

14 February 2019 :

Supreme Court’s Intervention to Allow Execution of Domineque Ray Provokes Widespread Condemnation. The U.S. Supreme Court has found itself in the crossfire of harsh criticism from across the political spectrum after its intervention in a death penalty case allowed Alabama to execute a Muslim prisoner without providing him access to a religious adviser. Evangelical Christians and Catholic Bishops joined editorial boards and commentators from the New York Times to the National Review in condemning the Court’s 5-4 decision permitting the execution of Domineque Ray (pictured) on February 7, 2019. Los Angeles Times deputy editorial page editor Jon Healey wrote: “If you need a rabbi, an imam or other non-Christian spiritual advisor to accompany you into the death chamber in Alabama, God help you. Because the U.S. Supreme Court won’t.” Libertarian professor Ilya Somin, of the George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School, called the decision a “grave injustice” and the conservative National Review headlined a column by its senior writer David French, “The Supreme Court Upholds a Grave Violation of the First Amendment.” Alabama scheduled Ray’s execution on November 6. Undisclosed to Ray and the other death-row prisoners, Alabama’s secret execution protocol mandated that a Christian chaplain—and no other religious adviser—be present in the execution chamber. Ray sought to be provided the same access to religious comfort that the state afforded Christian prisoners, and requested that his imam be allowed in the execution chamber. The state denied his request on January 23, 2019, saying that the chaplain was allowed in the chamber because he was a trained employee of the Department of Corrections, but an untrained volunteer imam would present security concerns. Five days later, Ray sought a stay of execution alleging that Alabama’s policy violated his First Amendment right to free exercise of religion. A federal appeals court granted a stay to allow briefing on the issue, but the U.S. Supreme Court, in a contentious 5-4 decision, reversed the decision. In a dissent joined by Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor, Justice Elena Kagan wrote, “Under that policy, a Christian prisoner may have a minister of his own faith accompany him into the execution chamber to say his last rites. But if an inmate practices a different religion — whether Islam, Judaism, or any other — he may not die with a minister of his own faith by his side. That treatment goes against the Establishment Clause’s core principle of denominational neutrality.” Christian leaders raised concerns about the decision’s disregard of human dignity and its broader impact on religious liberty. In a news release issued under the heading “U.S. Bishops’ Chairmen Condemn Decision Preventing Muslim Man from Receiving Appropriate Spiritual Care at Execution,” the chairs of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops committees for Religious Liberty and for Domestic Justice and Human Development called the death penalty itself “an affront to human dignity.” The statement said “Mr. Ray bore the further indignity of being refused spiritual care in his last moments of life.” The committee chairs—Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, and Bishop Frank J. Dewane of Venice, Florida—wrote: “This unjust treatment is disturbing to people of all faiths, whether Muslim, Christian, Jewish, or otherwise. People deserve to be accompanied in death by someone who shares their faith. It is especially important that we respect this right for religious minorities.” In an op-ed for The New York Times, Alan Cross, a pastor and missional strategist with the Montgomery Baptist Association, wrote, “I am not a Muslim. I am an evangelical Christian minister in Alabama. But my religious freedom — everyone’s religious freedom — took a hit when my state decided that instead of slowing down to accommodate religious difference, the execution, which is final and irrevocable, had to go on as scheduled.” Pastor Cross stressed the value of religious diversity, saying “The solution to diversity is not to eliminate religious difference, but rather to work together to be fully who we are, to cultivate a society where religious belief is recognized and accommodated. Mr. Ray’s religious freedom mattered as much as anyone else’s. That freedom is part of what makes America great. When it is lost, it is replaced by a sterility and silence that will ultimately drive us apart.” In its own editorial, the New York Times editorial board called the Supreme Court ruling a “moral failure” that diminished Muslims and compounded the indignity of its prior acquiescence in the travel ban imposed by the Trump administration.

(Source: DPIC, 13/02/2019)

18 February 2019 :

More than 48,000 people are being held in immigration detention. The number of people in immigration detention has increased under every presidential administration for more than 25 years. Since taking office, the Trump administration’s ramp up of immigration enforcement and the introduction of a zero-tolerance policy for illegal border crossers has resulted in the federal government holding more migrants in detention than ever before. The average number of people in detention on any day has grown by more than 40 percent during Trump’s two years in office. But this isn’t the first time the U.S. detention system has seen a massive expansion. A review of data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement shows that over the last 25 years, it has been on a nearly constant upswing as every successive presidential administration has expanded detention and deportation practices in response to the national debate on immigration. Congress and the president wrangled this week over whether to increase or contract the amount of space used to hold immigrant detainees. Long before Donald Trump became president, the system had been growing, nearly six-fold since 1994. So far this fiscal year, the average daily population in detention has been 45,890, the highest yet. The detention system holds people who have pending immigration court cases for removal from the country, such as those seeking asylum from repressive regimes, undocumented workers and legal residents who have committed crimes. The system has four family detention facilities, where the detainees include children, and more than 200 adult facilities that range from private prisons to county jails as well as dedicated facilities run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Under President Bill Clinton the daily population in detention tripled from what it had been in 1994 (6,785) to nearly 20,000 at the end of his second term. A pair of laws passed in 1996 and signed by Clinton resulted in a vast expansion of the system, introducing mandatory detentions for asylum seekers and legal immigrants who had committed crimes, indefinite detention and additional spending on enforcement. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, President George W. Bush also cracked down on immigration, ending a policy in 2005 that permitted those being caught crossing the border to be released until their court dates. By 2007 the average daily population rised at 30,000. By the time Barack Obama took office (2009), the average daily population had ballooned to more than 30,000. Though detention numbers dipped briefly under Obama, by the time of the 2016 election the daily average had reached just over 34,000 after an influx of Central American migrants at the southern U.S. border. In each administration, the growth of the detention system was used to broker political compromises in lieu of dealing with an overburdened immigration system. On February 10, 2019 48,747 people were being held in immigration detention, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Trump is asking to increase the number of beds used to detain migrants to 52,000 as outlined in his 2019 budget proposal, raising the budget by $4.2 billion. As part of the federal budget negotiations over immigration, Democrats were calling for a cap of 16,500 immigrants detained within the country's interior and for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to prioritize deporting criminals. The current number of immigrants detained from the interior is 20,700, according to ICE. Democrats further sought to lower the overall daily population to fewer than 35,000, close to the last count under the Obama administration. A new Congressional deal now under review at the White House offers an overall funding cap for 40,520 detention beds, along with $1.4 billion for border fencing. However, The New York Times reports that internal communications from Republican aides describe a possible increase of detention space for up to 58,500 people by re-allocating money to ICE using discretionary funding. As the new deal awaits a verdict, the question of how much detention capacity will increase in the immediate future hangs in limbo. If past administrations are any indication, the system will continue to grow.

(Source: The Marshall Project, 12/02/2019)

11 February 2019 :

Death-Penalty Film, ‘Clemency,’ Wins Sundance Festival Best Drama Award. Clemency, a film exploring the psychological toll of the death penalty, has been awarded the U.S. Grand Jury Prize for Drama at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival on February 2, 2019. The movie, written and directed by Nigerian-American filmmaker Chinonye Chukwu, tells the story of prison warden Bernadine Williams (portrayed by Alfre Woodard) as she prepares to oversee her 12th execution in the aftermath of a botched execution. Chukwu said she was inspired to write the script after the controversial execution of Troy Davis, a Georgia prisoner with serious claims of innocence, in 2011. “The morning after Troy Davis was executed, so many of us were sad and frustrated and angry. And I thought, ‘If we’re all dealing with these emotions, what must it be like for the people who had to kill him? You know, what is it like for your livelihood to be tied to the taking of human life?’ And so, that was the seed that was planted, and it was a way for me to enter an exploration of humanities that exist between prison walls.” Chukwu said she chose to focus on the perspective of the warden “to explore and challenge the system of incarceration,” and to broaden the reach and impact of the film. “I think it would really complicate people’s thinking around the death penalty and around incarceration and the humanities that are tied to incarceration, if it’s not told through the lawyer, through the defense attorney or through a protester, but somebody who is a part of the system, somebody who might embody the values that, you know, somebody who’s for the death penalty might embody,” she said. She conducted research for Clemency by meeting with death-penalty lawyers, death-row exonerees, and former wardens like Dr. Allen Ault, an outspoken critic of the death penalty. She also volunteered on a clemency campaign for Tyra Patterson, an Ohio woman who was a life sentence for a crime she says she did not commit. Patterson was paroled in 2017 after 23 years in prison. In her speech accepting the Best Drama prize, Chukwu said she had made the film “so we as a society can stop defining people by their worst possible acts, that we can end mass incarceration and dismantle the prison-industrial complex, and root our societies in true justice and mercy and freedom, which is all tied to our joy inside, which nobody can ever incarcerate and execute.” Chukwu is the first Black woman director to win the Sundance Grand Jury Prize.

Jay-Z And Meek Mill Officially Launch Their REFORM Alliance With A $50 Million Pledge. In the months since Meek Mill was released from prison after a lengthy — and as-yet-unfinished — battle with the criminal justice system, the Philadelphia rapper has been an outspoken advocate for criminal justice reform, appearing on television and writing a New York Times editorial to address the need for prison reform, especially cash bail and probation, which has kept Meek under the system’s thumb since his teens. He and Jay-Z, one of his staunchest supporters during his incarceration, also linked up to form a criminal justice reform organization called REFORM Alliance, releasing the details of the organization in a press release today. REFORM Alliance counts its mission as advancing “criminal justice reform and [eliminating] outdated laws that perpetuate injustice, starting with probation and parole.” The founding members and board also include Kraft Group CEO and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, Philadelphia 76ers co-owner and Fanatics executive chairman Michael Rubin, Brooklyn Nets co-owner Clara Wu Tsai, Third Point LLC founder Daniel S. Loeb, Vista Equity Partners founder Robert F. Smith, and Galaxy Digital founder Michael E. Novogratz. The CEO for REFORM is journalist Van Jones, and the founders have collectively pledged $50 million to its launch. Meek Mill explained the importance and need for prison reform in a statement, writing, “Creating the REFORM Alliance is one of the most important things I’ve ever done in my life. If you thought my case was unfair, there are millions of others dealing with worse situations and caught up in the system without committing crimes. With this alliance, we want to change outdated laws, give people hope and reform a system that’s stacked against us.”

(Source: uproxx.com, 23/01/2019)

14 January 2019 :

Chaos Continues in Guantánamo Death-Penalty Trial, As Another Military Judge Quits. The already chaotic Guantánamo death-penalty trial of Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, accused of orchestrating the October 2000 attack on the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Cole, hit another snag as the most recent judge assigned to preside over the controversial proceedings will be leaving the military and quitting the case. In a January 4, 2019 appellate pleading recently obtained by the McClatchy News Service, prosecutors advised the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that Air Force Colonel Shelley Schools, assigned in August 2018 as the third judge to preside over the USS Cole military tribunal, one month later accepted an offer to become an immigration court judge and “intends to retire from the military in the near future.” Schools’s retirement leaves the Guantánamo tribunal yet again without a judge to handle pretrial proceedings. Schools was assigned the case after former judge and Air Force Colonel Vance Spath also retired from the military to become a civilian immigration judge. It is unlikely that Schools will preside over any developments in the USS Cole case before she joins the immigration court in the summer of 2019. The case is currently on appeal in federal court, where Nashiri’s lawyers are seeking to vacate the rulings made by Spath during a three-year period in which he secretly pursued appointment of the civilian immigration judge job at the Department of Justice (DOJ), while presiding over Nashiri’s military tribunal case, which was being handled by DOJ prosecutors.

(Source: DPIC, 11/01/2019)

06 January 2019 :

USA - According to Fatal Encounters, in 2018 the police killed 1810 people. In 2018, the United States carried out 25 executions. This means that the police, even before a trial, killed 72 times more people than they were put to death as a result of a judicial procedure. Fatal Encounters is a website founded and directed by journalist D. Brian Burghart. Burghart describes the site's "mission" as follows: "I believe in a democracy, citizens should be able to figure out how many people are killed during interactions with law enforcement, why they were killed, and whether training and policies can be modified to decrease the number of officer-involved deaths”. The site, through a careful press review of minor and local newspapers, has collected in a database the extremes of over 24,000 killings made by the police from 1 January 2000 to today. The authors of the research estimate that the count may not be complete, but in fact Fatal Encounters is today the most complete and reliable source on this topic. In recent years, two other sites, Killed by Police and The Counted, had joined FE in taking account of police victims, but The Counted no longer updates data since December 31, 2016, and Killed by Police is currently only updated until 31 July 2018. For many years, official statistics of people killed by police were contained in the annual crime report published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The annual report, called "Crime in the United States" (CIUS), under the heading "justifiable homicides" indicates the murders committed by on duty officers, and, separately, by private citizens for "legitimate defense". The recent work of sites such as FE has brought to light the fact that while CIUS is a reliable source for "normal" killings, it was much less so for police killings, estimated for around half the data for many years. (see HoC 26/09/2018, 29/09/2018, 02/10/2018) Returning to the data available on FE, as of 6 January 2019, 1810 victims were listed as killed from January 1 to December 31, 2018. In the coming days there may be updates, but a few units. Divided by gender, the victims are 1606 males, 189 females, 2 transgender, and 13 whose names and other data have been omitted by the police. Divided by race, the victims are: 649 whites, 377 blacks, Americans of African descent, 240 Hispanics, 23 Native Americans or alaskan, 23 Asian, or Pacific Islands, 1 Middle Eastern and 497 of unspecified origin. Of 133 victims (7.3%) the age is unknown. Of the remaining part, 15 were under 10, 27 between 11 and 16, 59 between 17 and 18, 281 between 19 and 25, 720 between 26 and 40, 464 between 41 and 60, 81 between 60 and 70 years, 20 between 70 and 80 years, and 10 between 81 and 90 years. Overall, 101 of the 1,677 victims whose age is known were underage, 6%. California is the most populous state in the US, with 38 million inhabitants. Here the police killed 200 people. The other most populous states are Texas (27.5 million, 175 kills), New York (19.3 million, 36 kills, Florida (18.8 million, 125 kills, Illinois (12.8 million, 44 kills), Pennsylvania (12.7 million, 50 kills), Ohio (11.5 million, 71 kills). States that have a high number of killings are also Arizona (6.3 million, 73 kills) and Oklahoma (3.7 million, 71 kills) In proportion to the population, the states with the highest number of police killings are Oklahoma (1/52,000), Arizona (1/86,000), Florida (1/150,000), Texas (1/157,000) and California (1/190,000). They are all states in which the death penalty is in force.

(Sources: Hands off Cain, 06/01/2019)

14 January 2019 :

Netflix’s The Innocent Man: The American injustice system. Netflix’s 6-episode documentary, The Innocent Man, is based on bestselling novelist John Grisham’s only non-fiction effort, The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town, published in 2006. The series, released in December, is directed (and co-created) by Clay Tweel, with Grisham serving as an executive producer. The Innocent Man In the early 1980s, 2 young women were murdered in the small town of Ada, Oklahoma. Four men were railroaded into prison for the killings. The new miniseries blends interviews with the families of the victims and those of the wrongfully incarcerated men, as well as presenting damning archival footage and testimony from legal experts. Grisham is also one of the central commentators. “If I wrote The Innocent Man as a novel, fiction, folks probably wouldn’t believe it,” he tells the camera. The miniseries opens with the brutal December 1982 murder of 21-year-old Debbie Carter. Two years later, 24-year-old Denice Haraway was abducted from the convenience store where she worked and later killed. Investigating police officer Dennis Smith, Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) agent Gary Rogers and District Attorney Bill Peterson are the key figures in both cases. In each incident, 2 men were arrested and convicted of the crime. The pair found guilty of Debbie’s killing, Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz, have since been exonerated by DNA evidence. However, Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot, convicted of Denice’s murder, remain in prison, despite overwhelming evidence suggesting they are innocent. Defense attorneys and legal experts compile a chilling picture of how either prosecutors or law enforcement officials, or both, withheld a large quantity of exculpatory evidence, including Williamson’s mother’s journal that provided an alibi for her son on the night of Debbie’s slaying. In Ward’s case, attorney Cheryl Pilate and private investigator Dan Clark were obliged to hunt through 60 boxes of documents. “Throughout this case, we see a persistent pattern where exculpatory evidence is hidden, buried, concealed, and not turned over to the prosecutor and, therefore, had not been turned over to the defense in the case,” asserts Pilate. Out of the more than 800 pages of evidence, Ward’s attorneys only received 146, a clear constitutional violation. Furthermore, a career criminal, Terri Holland, was a “snitch” for the prosecutor in both cases. In one moving scene, Holland’s ex-husband and son describe how women like Terri are compelled to have sex with the local authorities, becoming pawns to be used at will. “In Ada, if you’re poor, you’re nothing,” a group of Ada residents tell the camera, describing how police treat impoverished people like Tommy Ward. For the record, all the crime and frame-up victims in this case are white. False confessions expert Richard Leo adamantly contends that the confessions of Ward and Fontenot were coerced. He points to evidence of the suspects being fed lines and rehearsing a script. Both confessions ran counter to the forensic evidence. After 12 years behind bars, Dennis Fritz contacted the Innocence Project, a non-profit group dedicated to clearing wrongfully convicted prisoners through DNA evidence (Grisham is a member of the organization’s board of directors). In 1999, Fritz and Williamson were cleared of the homicide charges. Williamson shockingly tells reporters he had once been five days away from being executed. Untreated in prison for serious mental illness, Williamson was so damaged that he tragically drank himself to death a few years after being freed. Writes Grisham: “Oklahoma is very serious about its death penalty. When the U.S. Supreme Court approved the resumption of executions in 1976, the Oklahoma state legislature rushed into a special session for the sole purpose of enacting death penalty statutes. The following year, the lawmakers debated the innovative idea of death by lethal injection, as opposed to going back to Old Sparky, the state’s dependable electric chair. The rationale was that chemicals were more merciful; thus, less likely to attract constitutional attacks of cruel and inhuman punishment; thus, more likely to speed along executions. “Thirteen long years passed without an execution. Finally, in 1990, the waiting ended, and the death chamber was used once again. Once the dam broke, the flood came. Since 1990, Oklahoma has executed more convicts on a per capita basis than any other state. No place, not even Texas, comes close.” In his notes at the end of his book, Grisham writes: “The journey also exposed me to the world of wrongful convictions, something that I, even as a former lawyer, had never spent much time thinking about. This is not a problem peculiar to Oklahoma, far from it. Wrongful convictions occur every month in every state in this country, and the reasons are all varied and all the same—bad police work, junk science, faulty eyewitness identifications, bad defense lawyers, lazy prosecutors, arrogant prosecutors…” Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot “are now serving life terms. Tommy might one day be eligible for parole, but, through a procedural quirk, Karl will never be. They cannot be saved by DNA because there is no biological evidence. The killer or killers of Denice Haraway will never be found, not by the police anyway.” About the Grisham’s book, see also Hands off Cain December 6, 2006 and November 11, 2018.

FACTS

Pfizer Blocks the Use of Its Drugs in Executions. The pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced today that it has imposed sweeping controls on the distribution of its products to ensure that none are used in lethal injections, a step that closes off the last remaining open-market source of drugs used in executions. More than 20 American and European drug companies have already adopted such restrictions, citing either moral or business reasons. Nonetheless, the decision from one of the world's leading pharmaceutical manufacturers is seen as a milestone. "With Pfizer's announcement, all F.D.A.-approved manufacturers of any potential execution drug have now blocked their sale for this purpose," said Maya Foa, who tracks drug companies for Reprieve, a London-based human rights advocacy group. "Executing states must now go underground if they want to get hold of medicines for use in lethal injection." The obstacles to lethal injection have grown in the last 5 years as manufacturers, seeking to avoid association with executions, have barred the sale of their products to corrections agencies. Experiments with new drugs, a series of botched executions and covert efforts to obtain lethal chemicals have mired many states in court challenges. The mounting difficulty in obtaining lethal drugs has already caused states to furtively scramble for supplies. Some states have used straw buyers or tried to import drugs from abroad that are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, only to see them seized by federal agents. Some have covertly bought supplies from compounding pharmacies while others, including Arizona, Oklahoma and Ohio, have delayed executions for months or longer because of drug shortages or legal issues tied to injection procedures. A few states have adopted the electric chair, firing squad or the gas chamber as an alternative if lethal drugs are not available. Lawyers for condemned inmates have challenged the efforts of corrections officials to conceal how the drugs are obtained, saying this makes it impossible to know if they meet quality standards or might cause undue suffering. Before Missouri put to death a prisoner on Wednesday, for example, it refused to say in court whether the lethal barbiturate it used, pentobarbital, was produced by a compounding pharmacy or a licensed manufacturer. Akorn, the only approved company making that drug, has tried to prevent its use in executions. Pfizer manufactures 7 of them: the sedatives propofol, midazolam, and hydromorphone, the muscle relaxant pancuronium bromide and 2 variants of it, and potassium chloride, which is used to stop the inmate's heart. Pfizer's decision follows its acquisition last year of Hospira, a company that has made seven drugs used in executions including barbiturates, sedatives and agents that cause paralysis or heart failure. Hospira had long tried to prevent diversion of its products to state prisons but had not succeeded; its products were used in a prolonged, apparently agonizing execution in Ohio in 2014, and are stockpiled by Arkansas, according to documents obtained by reporters. Because these drugs are also distributed for normal medical use, there is no way to determine what share of the agents used in recent executions were produced by Hospira, or more recently, Pfizer. Campaigns against the death penalty, and Europe's strong prohibitions on the export of execution drugs, have raised the stakes for pharmaceutical companies. But many, including Pfizer, say medical principles and business concerns have guided their policies. "Pfizer makes its products to enhance and save the lives of the patients we serve," the company said in Friday's statement, and "strongly objects to the use of its products as lethal injections for capital punishment." Pfizer said it would restrict the sale to selected wholesalers of seven products that could be used in executions. The distributors must certify that they will not resell the drugs to corrections departments and will be closely monitored. Pressure on the drug companies has not only come from human rights groups. Trustees of the New York State pension fund, which is a major shareholder in Pfizer and many other producers, have used the threat of shareholder resolutions to push 2 other companies to impose controls and praised Pfizer for its new policy. "A company in the business of healing people is putting its reputation at risk when it supplies drugs for executions," Thomas P. DiNapoli, the state comptroller, said in an email. "The company is also risking association with botched executions, which opens it to legal and financial damage." Less than a decade ago, lethal injection was generally portrayed as a simple, humane way to put condemned prisoners to death. Virtually all executions used the same 3-drug combination: sodium thiopental, a barbiturate, to render the inmate unconscious, followed by a paralytic and a heart-stopping drug. In 2009, technical production problems, not the efforts of death-penalty opponents, forced the only federally approved factory that made sodium thiopental to close. That, plus more stringent export controls in Europe, set off a cascade of events that have bedeviled state corrections agencies ever since. Many states have experimented with new drug combinations, sometimes with disastrous results, such as the prolonged execution of Joseph Wood in Arizona in 2014, using the sedative midazolam. The state's executions are delayed as court challenges continue. Under a new glaring spotlight, deficiencies in execution procedures and medical management have also been exposed. After winning a Supreme Court case last year for the right to execute Richard E. Glossip and others using midazolam, Oklahoma had to impose a stay only hours before Mr. Glossip's scheduled execution in September. Officials discovered they had obtained the wrong drug, and imposed a moratorium as a grand jury conducts an investigation. A majority of the 32 states with the death penalty have imposed secrecy around their drug sources, saying that suppliers would face severe reprisals or even violence from death penalty opponents. In a court hearing this week, a Texas official argued that disclosing the identity of its pentobarbital source "creates a substantial threat of physical harm." But others, noting the evidence that states are making covert drug purchases, see a different motive. "The secrecy is not designed to protect the manufacturers, it is designed to keep the manufacturers in the dark about misuse of their products," said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a research group in Washington. Georgia, Missouri and Texas have obtained pentobarbital from compounding pharmacies, which operate without normal F.D.A. oversight and are intended to help patients meet needs for otherwise unavailable medications. But other states say they have been unable to find such suppliers. Texas, too, is apparently hedging its bets. Last fall, shipments of sodium thiopental, ordered by Texas and Arizona from an unapproved source in India, were seized in airports by federal officials. For a host of legal and political reasons as well as the scarcity of injection drugs, the number of executions has declined, to just 28 in 2015, compared with a recent peak of 98 in 1999, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Hands off Cain is an international league of citizens and parliamentarians for the abolition of the death penalty in the world. It is a non-profit, non-violent, transnational and trans-national Partito Radicale founded in Brussels in 1993 and recognized in 2005 by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a development co-operation NGO.